By Sadie Nicholas and Alison Smith Squire
Last updated at 8:20 AM on 08th April 2009
Aimee Broberg from Middlesbrough shows the scars on her arms after two years of using sunbeds twice every day
Looking in the mirror at her tanned reflection, 15-year-old Aimee Broberg couldn't help feeling pleased with her appearance.
'It was the height of summer and a few sunbathing sessions in the garden had turned my skin a warm honey colour,' she says. 'The golden tan made me feel glowing with health.'
A few days later, dismayed that her tan was fading, Aimee decided to top up her colour with a session on a sunbed.
It was a decision she would later bitterly regret. For that sunbed session was to mark the beginning of an addiction to using sunbeds - an addiction that almost drove Aimee to the brink of suicide and for which she is still paying a heavy price.
For today, aged 19, her young skin is scarred from using sunbeds. Shockingly, she is on chemotherapy - medicine usually reserved for cancer patients - to calm a rare rash triggered by sunbed use.
She can never sunbathe again, and her consultant has warned her that her chance of developing skin cancer has soared.
Yet, most worryingly, Aimee is not a rare case. She is one of many women finding themselves in this terrible predicament after using sunbeds.
Unfortunately, like so many other teenagers, when Aimee first went on a sunbed the thought of how damaging it may be to her skin was the last thing on her mind.
'As I lay under the sunbed's warm lights, it was so relaxing I almost dozed off,' she says. 'Five more sunbed sessions later and I looked as if I'd been on a cruise around the Med.'
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Friends were complimentary. 'Everyone said how great I looked,' says Aimee. 'People kept asking if I'd been on holiday.'
From then on, she was hooked - using pocket money from her Saturday job to fund her habit.
It was an addiction that Aimee's mother, Joanne, 42, claims she had no idea about.
'I knew Aimee had a few sunbed sessions,' says Joanne, a nursery assistant. 'But I warned her not to have too many because she could age her skin.
Regrets: Jenna Gurney, left, and Darina Mulligan, right, were determined to maintain a year-round tan but now regret their addiction after Jenna developed a potentially deadly malignant melanoma and Darina too had a melanoma removed
'One evening, I said to Aimee: "I hope you're not using sunbeds too much." But she told me it was fake tan from a bottle. And I took her at her word - I just never imagined she was having all these sunbed sessions.'
When Aimee left school to work as a carer, her habit increased. Aged 16, she was secretly using sunbeds twice a day - once at lunchtime for nine minutes and again after work for the same amount of time.
'I knew it was wrong,' she says. 'I had to use different salons because no one would let me use a sunbed twice a day.
'Friends had dubbed me "tanorexic" and "permatan", but I didn't care. I loved being brown. Missing one day on a sunbed would upset me because I thought my tan was fading. I convinced myself it wasn't harmful - after all, I never burned.'
But when Aimee was out for a night with friends, she noticed a blister on her finger.
'The skin was hanging off my finger. I couldn't understand where it had come from,' she says.
'Worse to come'
Worse was to come. The next day, when Aimee woke up, she discovered it had spread into dozens of tiny blisters. In places, the skin was peeling.
'My skin felt as if it was blazing on fire,' says Aimee.
In tears, she showed her mum, who was as stunned as she was.
She saw her GP, who was mystified. He gave her creams, but despite several visits and more creams, the rash spread to her scalp.
'When I brushed my hair, skin fell off in clumps,' says Aimee. 'It seemed to fall off like constant dandruff.'
Devastatingly, Aimee discovered even going outside in sunshine made the rash erupt in blisters.
'I locked myself in my bedroom and refused to see anyone. I could not face going to work - I felt ashamed of my skin,' she says.
Her GP referred her to a dermatologist, but despite more prescriptions for lotions, they did not work.
'Then one day I looked into the mirror and, seeing my blotchy skin, couldn't take any more,' she says.
'I raided the medicine cabinet, tipping any pills - aspirin, paracetamol - into my hands.'
It was then, as she stood with pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other, that her mother walked in.
Experts say a 'binge-tanning' epidemic is to blame for increased rates in skin cancer cases
Joanne says: 'I was horrified. I grabbed Aimee by the arm and told her I was taking her straight to hospital.'
Aimee was admitted to James Cook University Hospital near her home in Middlesbrough. She remained there for three weeks while doctors battled to get her rash under control.
Finally, the consultant came to see her. Aimee says: 'He said: "Have you ever used a sunbed?" When I said yes, he told me I had a rare condition called Pityriasis rubra pilaris, which was triggered by sunbed use.
'I broke down when he told me that though it wasn't fatal, there was no cure and I could have it for life. He said I could never go on a sunbed again and would have to cover up from head to foot in sunny weather or the rash would flare up.'
The only treatment that would calm it was Methotrexate tablets, a form of chemotherapy. Two years on from the diagnosis and Aimee is still taking chemotherapy to control the rash which, though a lot better, is still there.
The drug has thinned her hair and if she wants children she will have to come off it for months before she can conceive safely.
'My skin will never be normal,' she says. 'I feel stupid for using sunbeds.'
'Skin cancer'
It is a sentiment echoed by Jenna Gurney. From the age of 16, her twice-weekly visit to the tanning salon - spending 14 minutes (the maximum allowed) on a sunbed, costing 50p a minute - was something of a ritual.
For £14 a week, she managed to keep her bronzed glow, adding to it with regular holidays in the sun where she would console herself that if she did get a little sunburned, that it would soon 'go brown anyway'.
When, at 21, Jenna noticed that a large, flat mole on her stomach had grown and become flaky, she was concerned enough to go to her GP. But she never dreamed she would be told she had skin cancer.
In fact, the cash administrator had the deadliest form, a malignant melanoma, which is the most common form of cancer affecting women in their 20s.
Jenna, who today is as zealous in her determination to protect herself in the sun as she once was to get a tan, describes how the prospect of a death sentence has made her wish she never used a sunbed.
'When I was a teenager, my friends and I used sunbeds all the time. It was important to have a tan all year round and to top it up for nights out.
'I would always go somewhere sunny on holiday and getting a tan was my main aim. Then, when I got home, I wanted to keep the tan, so I started using sunbeds.
'I would use them twice a week on average. When I used sunbeds, I used an intensifier cream instead of any kind of protective sun lotion.
'On holiday, I did put on sun lotion, but never worried about reapplying it regularly or using a high factor.' But then came a trip to her GP that changed everything.
Only one in four tanning salons have agreed to a voluntary ban on allowing under-16s to use the booths
The doctor was immediately concerned when he saw the mole, advising that it should be removed.
'I still didn't think much of it,' she says. 'Even though the risks were at the back of my mind, I'm just one of those people who think it will never happen to me.
'But then the results came back and a nurse told me I had been diagnosed with a malignant melanoma. It was a shock because I just hadn't been expecting it. As soon as someone says cancer, you think: "Am I going to die?" It's scary.'
Jenna had to go into hospital to have an area of skin around the mole removed, along with lymph nodes from under her arm.
She then endured a nerve-racking wait to find out if the cancer had spread. Fortunately, it hadn't. Since then, she has had to undergo six-monthly check-ups.
Today, the 28-year-old still loves a tan, but prefers to fake it than run any risk of harming her skin in the sun or on a sunbed.
'If I could go back and have my time again, I would never use sunbeds,' she says.
'I wouldn't want to go through the stress and worry of having cancer for the sake of a tan.
'I've always liked the look of a healthy glow, but I am now really careful in the sun, stay in the shade and religiously apply sun lotion.
'I hope my story will make others aware of the risks of melanoma from using sunbeds.'
'Heavy price'
Darina Mulligan was another young woman determined to preserve a year-round golden tan.
She started using sunbeds 13 years ago because she wanted to improve her look, but today she is paying a heavy price for her vanity.
'The irony is that, probably as a result of using them, I have a three-inch scar on the inside of my right knee where I had a melanoma removed last August,' says Darina, 31, who runs her own event contracting company and lives in Balham, South London.
'As a teenager, I loved to get a tan on family holidays and associated looking well with having a golden glow. It was purely a vanity thing, but was naive considering I have fair skin and freckles.
'The year I went to university, I'd just returned from a holiday in Spain and a friend suggested that since I had such a lovely tan, I should keep it topped up by having a few sunbed sessions.
'I remember thinking: "Great, now I don't even have to go on holiday to get a tan and I'll still be brown at Christmas."
'Unfortunately, after a couple of visits to the tanning salon, I was lured by an offer to buy a block of ten sessions at a reduced price.
'Even though I didn't use sunbeds every week, I used them regularly until I was 23, going through phases of intensive use.
'Particularly before and after holidays, I'd go on the sunbed in the belief that it would help build up a tan in the first instance, so that I had a head start when I hit the beach abroad and then maintain my colour when I returned home.
'When I look back at the logic I used it horrifies me, but the awareness about the risks of sunbeds and skin cancer wasn't the same at that time. I was no different to my friends - we all liked to look tanned.
'The only reason I stopped using sunbeds was because I went to Australia after university and met a friend who told me I really shouldn't be out in the sun.
'When I asked why not, she pulled down her T-shirt - I suddenly realised I'd never seen her with her decolletage exposed - to reveal a frightening-looking chest covered in dark pigmentation marks and lines.
Shaken
'She explained that she'd been a surfer in her 20s with a constant tan, and this damage had appeared only in recent years.'
Darina adds: 'After that, I stopped using sunbeds and took more care in the sun. But a year ago I noticed that a freckle I've always had on the inside of my right knee had changed shape, size and colour.
'It had always been dark and circular, but the edges had lightened and spread to give it a rugged outline.
'I'd done some work helping to launch three mobile cancer awareness units with Cancer Research, and had taken more notice of my moles as a result. Thank goodness I did.
'By August, I was concerned enough about my mole to see a nurse at a mole clinic, who advised me to have it removed immediately.
'My GP referred me to a specialist and, thanks to private healthcare, within a week I'd had the mole removed under local anaesthetic. As the surgeon excised it, he said he was certain it was a melanoma, and when the biopsy results confirmed this, I had to have another operation to remove the surrounding tissue.'
Luckily for Darina, the cancer hadn't spread, but she was shaken by what had happened.
'There's no proof that using sunbeds or sunbathing caused my cancer, but there's every chance that it contributed to it. If I knew 13 years ago what I know now, I would never have used a sunbed at all.'
What a terrible tragedy!
Yiz